fgetpwent — get password file entry

Synopsis

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <pwd.h>

struct passwd *fgetpwent(FILE *stream);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

fgetpwent():
   Since glibc 2.19:
       _DEFAULT_SOURCE
   Glibc 2.19 and earlier:
       _SVID_SOURCE

Description

The fgetpwent() function returns a pointer to a structure containing the broken out fields of a line in the file stream. The first time it is called it returns the first entry; thereafter, it returns successive entries. The file referred to by stream must have the same format as /etc/passwd (see passwd(5)).

The passwd structure is defined in <pwd.h> as follows:

struct passwd {
    char   *pw_name;       /* username */
    char   *pw_passwd;     /* user password */
    uid_t   pw_uid;        /* user ID */
    gid_t   pw_gid;        /* group ID */
    char   *pw_gecos;      /* real name */
    char   *pw_dir;        /* home directory */
    char   *pw_shell;      /* shell program */
};

Return Value

The fgetpwent() function returns a pointer to a passwd structure, or NULL if there are no more entries or an error occurs. In the event of an error, errno is set to indicate the cause.

Errors

ENOMEM

Insufficient memory to allocate passwd structure.

Files

/etc/passwd

password database file

Attributes

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

Interface Attribute Value
fgetpwent() Thread safety MT-Unsafe race:fgetpwent

Conforming to

SVr4.

See Also

endpwent(3), fgetpwent_r(3), fopen(3), getpw(3), getpwent(3), getpwnam(3), getpwuid(3), putpwent(3), setpwent(3), passwd(5)

Colophon

This page is part of release 5.04 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Referenced By

getpw(3), getpwent(3), getpwent_r(3), getpwnam(3), putpwent(3).

2018-02-02 GNU Linux Programmer's Manual